Charles Fitzgerald suspects IBM is going to regret not acquiring Sun, and letting Oracle do so instead. "They regretted giving Microsoft control of the software crown jewels for the PC; they may face similar situation now on the server." Fitzgerald knows whereof he speaks, having been Microsoft's former general manager of platform strategy until early last year.

Writing in his "Platformnomics" blog, Fitzgerald declares that "this isn't a merger of equals. It is the end of Sun. Only Oracle survives."

His analysis is that Sun's hardware business will get "flipped to HP, Fujitsu, an Asian up-and-comer or someone else" and that there will be "Serious layoffs ahead at Sun regardless of how it plays out for Oracle."

Read his blog in full here.